Tommy Campbell, Kansas City’s Greatest Boxer

In the late 1940s and 1950s, Kansas City native Tommy Campbell won 50 professional fights and became the world’s No. 2 lightweight. But thanks to a run-in with organized crime, he is now all but forgotten in the town that nurtured him.

Phil S. Dixon, author of Tommy Campbell: A Boxing Bout with the Mob, relates how Campbell became the only fighter to testify in court about how mobsters attempted to seize control of the lightweight division, muscling him into throwing one fight.

Dixon, a resident of Belton, Missouri, is the author of The Monarchs: 1920-1938; John “Buck” O’Neil: The Rookie, the Man, the Legacy; Wilber “Bullet” Rogan and the Kansas City Monarchs; and The Ultimate Kansas City Baseball Trivia Quiz Book.